103 | Your Greatest Investment and Compounding Results

The greatest investment you can make is in yourself.

So often we invest our time and money into other things—social media, Netflix, Amazon—and neglect our own personal development.

But when we invest in ourselves, we learn skills that pay dividends over our lifetime. As we continue to apply those skills, our results compound. That’s true especially with learning to manage your money well.

In this episode, let’s talk about why investing in yourself is the greatest investment and the compounding results of learning to manage your money well.

Topics Discussed

• why investing in yourself is the greatest investment you can make
• investments I’ve made in myself over the years
• the value of obtaining new knowledge and learning to think differently
• the benefits of learning to manage your money beyond your immediate savings or debt goal
• investing in other things vs. investing in yourself

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Resources mentioned

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Work with me

If you’re ready to learn the mindset and strategies to master your money, let’s schedule a call. 

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Social media: Instagram and LinkedIn

Email: hello@rhothomas.com

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Lightly Edited Transcript

You’re listening to Wealthyesque. We are a community of lawyers who believe that true wealth is having control of our time. I’m Rho Thomas, and as a busy wife, mom and former Biglaw associate, I know all too well the tension between the culture of the legal profession and pretty much everything else you want to do in life. That’s why each week, I’m bringing you the information and tools you need to improve your money mindset and manage your money to create true wealth. Because ultimately, it’s not about the money. It’s about the freedom and flexibility the money affords.

Hey friend. Welcome back to the show. I hope you’re doing well and having an amazing day so far. So today we are talking about the greatest investment you can make and the compounding results of your investments. Often when we’re talking about investing and compounding results, we are talking specifically about money and typically about investing in the stock market and earning compound interest on your investments. But I believe the greatest investment you can make is in yourself. So often, especially for those of us socialized as women. We put everything and everyone else before ourselves and don’t take the time or the money to invest in ourselves. But the investments you make in yourself compound over time and can only lead to you achieving better results in all the different areas of your life. I have made many investments in myself over the years. So I’ve talked before about investing in therapy and coaching and I invest in taking care of my body. And when I was still practicing, I invested in trainings and workshops and conferences. And although those were typically paid for by my firm I still invested the time in attending them I read a lot of books, I listened to informational and personal development podcasts. And the key in all of it is I apply the things I learned when you invest in yourself whether that’s investing time or money and caring for yourself in improving your mental health, your physical health, your emotional health, your financial health. You learn things that can never be taken from you knowledge is invaluable. And when you see something in a new way from a new perspective, you can’t unsee it. When you completely change the way you think about yourself, the way you think about your practice, the way you think about your relationships the way you think about money that can never be taken away I think about the proverb about giving a man a fish versus teaching him how to fish. So if I give you a fish, I fed you for a day, but when I teach you how to fish I’ve now fed you for a lifetime. Changing the way you think about a topic and learning to apply new information is so incredibly valuable. And I want to talk today about money specifically. It is central to our lives. It touches just about everything we do. And so learning to manage your money can only serve you and can only lead to compounding results. Years ago when I would help my friends and colleagues with their money, and even when I first started my business I offered one off sessions. So I would talk to the person for an hour about whatever issue they had. And usually it was something to do with their budget and managing their cash flow or mapping out a plan to pay off their debt. But what I found was that after those sessions, some people were good and they could take the things we talked about and run with them. But other people would come back with the same issues later. And I knew I needed to address the mindset piece of it because there was clearly something different in the way these two groups of people were approaching their finances. So now rather than a one off session, I offer a six month package because I found that that’s a great amount of time to learn these new skills but also to deeply change the way you think about yourself and your money so that the new skills you learn just become the way you manage your money. It goes so far beyond whatever your immediate goal is, like people often come to work with me with an immediate goal of saving a certain amount or paying off debt or just having a plan for their spending period because a lot of times we don’t make plans for the spending piece. We just know we have this money coming in and it’s available to spend so we spend it and then hope that there’s something left. And yes, I will help you achieve that immediate goal. But the bigger benefit beyond achieving that goal is that you completely change the way you think about money and the way that you relate to money and the way you think about your ability to manage it for the rest of your life. So think about the compound return of just that part. Like yeah, you saved $20,000 Or you paid off $20,000 of debt or whatever it is. But now you go on and know how to do that for the rest of your life. And as your income increases as you get bonuses as you get other windfalls. You know exactly what to do with that money. Because you’ve learned the skill of managing your money. My clients multiply their investment just in the time we work together. So the amount they pay me is just a fraction of what they end up saving or paying off in debt in just the six months. But it doesn’t stop there because they now have knowledge that can never be taken away from them. And they approach money completely differently and they no longer feel stressed. They feel confident and they know exactly what they’re doing. They no longer feel guilty when they’re about to buy something, thinking in the back of their mind that they shouldn’t be buying it or that they should be using their money for something more responsible. They have more productive conversations with their partners about money. They have a plan and even as their circumstances change, they know how to adapt to those changes. And they’ll go on to build wealth. I actually just ran some calculations with two of my clients earlier this week. And we were looking at if they continue on the trajectory that they’re on, and they’re paying off debt at the rate that they’re going right now. And then they invest at that same rate even assuming no raises no bonuses or anything like that. In 1020 30 years from now, the result is at least a million and up to multiple millions of dollars. So the compound return of learning to manage your money now is huge, but too few of us actually invest in learning to manage our money and we miss out on all that could be if we did we believe that money is complicated and so we avoid it instead. We invest so much in other things that don’t have nearly the same capacity to impact our lives. So all the time we spend on Instagram, or watching TV or Netflix all the money we spend on Amazon or at your local restaurants are on vacation, right even the time and money that we spent on law school and stay with me here because obviously this one isn’t on the same level as those other things that I named, especially if you’re still practicing. But I was talking with a friend of mine recently about the fact that we invest three years and hundreds of 1000s of dollars to go to law school and we don’t even learn how to practice law. Have you ever thought about that you invested all this time all this money, and sure you learn how to think differently and read case law and such. But you didn’t actually learn how to be a lawyer. And you probably don’t use half the things you did learn in your practice. And you couldn’t even practice right away when you were finished because you still had to take another exam before you could legally practice and then you had to learn the actual skill of practicing on the job. That’s just so crazy to me. But anyway your money will impact just about every area of your life for the rest of your life. And you can keep spending your time and money on social media and Netflix and shopping and restaurants and vacations. Or you can invest in yourself and learn a different mindset and the skills that you will use to manage your money for the rest of your life. And obviously, it’s not to say that you can’t spend time or money on those other things. But how about you also spend time and your money on this right? Learning to manage your finances? You will see the compound results of that investment and reap the benefits of that investment for years to come. Once you learn these things, you can’t unlearn them. You just get better and better at applying them to your finances for the rest of your life. You no longer feel stressed about your finances. You stop fighting with your partner about money or feeling stupid or defensive when you talk to them about money. You know exactly where your money’s going and you see a clear path to reach your goals. You know exactly how to create a budget that fits your life and you actually stick to it. That’s the key. All of that is available to you when you invest in learning to manage your money. And you can do it on your own by investing the time and figuring things out by trial and error and making mistakes along the way and course correcting. That’s how I learned and it definitely works. But if you want an easier, faster way, I invite you to come work with me. You get the benefit of all the time I invested in learning about money, doing the work with my own finances, coming up with a process that’s worked for me and my clients. You get to shortcut the time to achieve your goals. Because I’ve already put in that time and done the trial and error part for you. You get to just implement a proven process that works. So if you’re ready to learn to manage your money and feel more peace with your finances, let’s talk about how we can work together. You can schedule your consultation at rho thomas.com/call Alright, that’s it for this week’s episode. Come connect with me over on social media I am most often on LinkedIn rho Thomas, and on Instagram at I am rho Thomas. Subscribe to the show and leave a review both of which helped people to find it and if you are so inclined, please think of a friend or two who would benefit from this information and share it with them. As we close out friend I pray that you take a good look at where you’re investing your time and money currently and consider the impact those things have on your life. I pray that the same way you are investing in those things, you will also invest in learning to manage your finances for the rest of your life. And as always, I pray that you continue to take steps to regain control of your time, build wealth, and live the life of freedom and choice you deserve. Talk to you later.